Electromagnetic properties of spin-3/2Majorana particles

Abstract

The structure of the electromagnetic vertex function of spin-3/2 particles is analyzed in a general way, for the diagonal and off-diagonal couplings, of charged as well as neutral particles including the case of self-conjugate (Majorana) particles. The restrictions imposed by common principles such as electromagnetic gauge invariance and hermiticity are studied, and the implications due to the discrete space-time symmetries or the Majorana condition are deduced when they are applicable. In some cases certain features of the vertex function are analogous to the known ones for the spin-1/2 or spin-1 particles, but we find and discuss other particular properties which are related to the spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger representation. For example, in the diagonal Majorana case, the vertex function can contain a term of the form $\gamma_\mu\gamma_5$, which resembles the axial charge radius term for Majorana neutrinos, plus another one that resembles the vertex function for self-conjugate spin-1 particles, but with the particularity that the two terms may not appear independently of each other, but instead with a specific relative coefficient. In essence this is due to the requirement that the vertex function does not mix the genuine spin-3/2 degrees of freedom with the spurious spin-1/2 components of the Rarita-Schwinger representation. The analogous results for the other cases (off-diagonal and charged couplings) are discussed as well.